This isn’t to say that the pogrom of 2002, where Muslims were massacred in public view in the presence of policemen, wasn’t on the minds of the bombers. It may well have been. But it’s hard to believe that anyone who had been directly affected by the killings would have plotted his revenge in this preening, taunting, clever-dick way. “The Indian Mujahideen strike again!” — this isn’t raging grief from a pogrom victim; it’s a line out of Zorro.

Because revenge for the Gujarat pogrom this is not. If anything, the bombings will help consolidate the systematic subordination of the province’s Muslims that has been accomplished over the past six years. Every bomb that exploded (or didn’t) helped demonize the community further, justified greater police surveillance and encouraged talk of ‘the enemy within’. There’s something surreal about an act of allegedly Muslim vengeance that allows Narendra Modi to look statesmanlike in the face of violent provocation. One newspaper speculated that Modi’s restraint was part of a concerted effort to re-make his resume for a future bid at becoming prime minister. If it was, then the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ were supplying the cues for a script not of their devising.

Mukul Kesavan on the “remote-controlled cleverness” of the recent bombings in Gujarat.